How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica

How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica — Ars Technica

Ars Technica

AI-assisted summary of How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica — original source. Check the original for full context.

Source published:

Key ideas

  • Cyan developed Myst on HyperCard under severe technical constraints, targeting baseline single-speed (1x) CD-ROM drives capped at 150 KB/s transfer rates and crippling drive-head seek latencies. (7:58)
  • To prevent audio buffering dropouts and interface lag, assets were compressed down to 8-bit color (roughly 50 KB per image) and arranged along physical disc spiral tracks by geographic proximity rather than alphabetically. (11:41)
  • Despite running over budget and past deadlines on a $250,000 investment, Myst shattered Cyan's optimistic 100,000-unit lifetime goal within months, moving millions of copies and dominating retail charts. (15:21)
  • Cyan completed a full circle back to independent development by using Kickstarter crowdfunding for Obduction and Firmament, bypassing traditional publisher gatekeepers and physical retail manufacturing. (21:34)

Detailed notes

## Background Published by Ars Technica on YouTube on January 28, 2020, as part of their War Stories series, this video features Cyan Worlds co-founder Rand Miller reflecting on the turbulent creation of the landmark adventure game Myst. The feature explores how the HyperCard-developed project nearly foundered under the severe technical restrictions of early optical media, forcing Rand and his brother Robyn to aggressively compress audio and visuals to run on baseline 1x CD-ROM drives.

## TL;DR Rand Miller traces Cyan's evolution from experimental HyperCard children's software like The Manhole and Cosmic Osmo to pitching an ambitious, story-driven adult adventure game backed by Japanese investors. Developing Myst demanded grueling technical workarounds, from hacking black-and-white Mac hardware to output color, to running an ad hoc distributed Mac render queue, to meticulously interleaving 50 KB compressed images and streaming audio along the physical spiral tracks of slow 1x CD-ROM drives. Against the creators' modest expectations, the game became a multi-million-selling cultural phenomenon that eliminated arbitrary puzzle tropes. Miller connects that groundbreaking era to the present day, noting how digital distribution and crowdfunding have allowed Cyan to return to its scrappy indie roots with Obduction and Firmament.

## Atmosphere & style The retrospective has a warm, intimate, and warmly nostalgic tone, framed by Rand Miller's self-deprecating candor and chuckles over the brother duo's youthful naivety. It feels like sitting down with an approachable pioneer who treats seemingly insurmountable technical hurdles as fascinating mechanical puzzles rather than dry engineering chores. The narrative captures the charming grit of garage-era computer development, blending the cozy romance of early Macintosh tinkering with the palpable, high-stakes anxiety of shipping an unproven technological gamble.

## Bulletin - [07:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=478s) Cyan developed Myst on HyperCard under severe technical constraints, targeting baseline single-speed (1x) CD-ROM drives capped at 150 KB/s transfer rates and crippling drive-head seek latencies. - [11:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=701s) To prevent audio buffering dropouts and interface lag, assets were compressed down to 8-bit color (roughly 50 KB per image) and arranged along physical disc spiral tracks by geographic proximity rather than alphabetically. - [15:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=921s) Despite running over budget and past deadlines on a $250,000 investment, Myst shattered Cyan's optimistic 100,000-unit lifetime goal within months, moving millions of copies and dominating retail charts. - [21:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=1294s) Cyan completed a full circle back to independent development by using Kickstarter crowdfunding for Obduction and Firmament, bypassing traditional publisher gatekeepers and physical retail manufacturing.

## Key takeaways - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=0s) Rand Miller's lifelong fascination with interactive computing began in junior high after encountering a text-based lunar lander simulation on a green CRT screen at the University of New Mexico. - [01:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=102s) Cyan was formed by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, combining Robyn's artistic and musical talent with Rand's software engineering background. - [01:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=102s) The studio pivoted from linear digital children's books to world-building with The Manhole, which became one of the earliest interactive entertainment titles released on CD-ROM. - [03:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=186s) Apple's HyperCard engine powered Cyan's early output by linking hand-drawn scenes through transparent interactive buttons, pushed to its technical limits in Cosmic Osmo. - [04:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=269s) A Japanese investor backed Myst with an approximate $250,000 budget after Cyan submitted a rudimentary seven-page proposal consisting of top-down island maps and handwritten notes. - [04:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=269s) Myst deliberately eliminated conventional video game tropes like scores, lives, and death, choosing instead to ground player motivation entirely in environmental narrative and logical world-building. - [06:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=406s) To author scenes in full color on an original black-and-white Macintosh SE, the brothers clipped an aftermarket adapter board directly to the processor pins to output to an external color display. - [07:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=478s) Cyan enforced a strict two-second interface response rule derived from Rand's banking background, ensuring players never questioned whether the system had frozen. - [10:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=632s) Because hardware was slow and rendering locked up active workstations, Cyan created an ad hoc distributed render farm by repurposing older Macs alongside primary workstations during lunch and coffee breaks. - [11:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=701s) Optical media seek times required Cyan to physically interleave scene graphics, ambient audio streams, and interactive sound effects close together along the disc's spiral tracks. - [15:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=921s) Cyan lacked access to an in-house CD-ROM burner during development, relying on blind faith until publisher Brøderbund pressed and returned the first gold master test disc. - [15:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=921s) Myst became a runaway commercial sensation, staying atop sales charts for years despite Rand's estimate that roughly 50% of players never solved the puzzles needed to leave the initial island. - [19:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=1141s) In designing Riven, Cyan sought to eliminate disconnected mini-games and arbitrary puzzles, demanding that every challenge emerge organically from the fictional world's culture and machinery. - [21:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=1294s) Digital storefronts and crowdfunding platforms revitalized the video game industry by removing physical manufacturing and retail distribution friction, enabling small teams to thrive again.

## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=0s) Over Budget, Over Time, and Hooked on Computing

Rand Miller, co-creator of *Myst*, looks back on the game's production with astonishment at the sheer stakes they faced. “You'd think that normal people would feel an immense amount of pressure over this,” he laughs, recalling how far behind schedule and past their financial limits the project drifted: “We were way over budget, way over time. I should not have been sleeping at night. There was so much on the line.” The team set out to construct a believable, immersive world, only to slam directly into the technical constraints of early CD-ROM hardware.

Miller’s love for computers originated back in junior high school. A college friend brought him to the University of New Mexico computer center, introducing him to a text-based lunar lander simulation on a green CRT screen. Stripped of visuals, the game merely printed numbers indicating altitude above the lunar surface, velocity, and remaining fuel, followed by a prompt where the user typed in fuel burns until either landing or crashing. For Miller, watching that simple text feedback was pure enchantment. His friend told him, “There are other games, and you can make your own games. This, you write programs to do this.” That realization instantly reshaped his life's ambitions.

[01:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=102s) The Origins of Cyan and the Accidental Creation of Worlds

In the mid-1980s, Rand founded Cyan with his brother Robyn. They chose the name because they envisioned a wide-open blue sky that would allow them to explore whatever medium they wanted. Rand initially wrote to Robyn suggesting they create an interactive children's book. Robyn had the artistic and musical talent along with enough computer literacy “to be dangerous,” while Rand supplied the technical programming with enough artistic intuition to match.

Their very first production, *The Manhole*, began with a drawing Robyn made of a manhole cover and a nearby fire hydrant. Instead of advancing to an arbitrary next page, both brothers became curious about what existed inside that scene: what lay underneath the manhole cover, or what secrets the fire hydrant held. Robyn then drew subsequent images—the cover pushed aside revealing an ascending vine, followed by a close-up of the fire hydrant showing a miniature door at its base. Linking these pictures together prompted a revelation: they were no longer illustrating a digital book, but creating a traversable world. *The Manhole* went on to become one of the earliest—if not the first—entertainment titles released on CD-ROM.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Evolution of Cyan World Design accDescr: Progression from the initial interactive book concept to fully realized adventure game worlds.

subgraph Early["Early Concepts"] A["Interactive Book Idea"] --> B["The Manhole<br/>(Still Images + Invisible Links)"] end

subgraph Expansion["HyperCard Mastery"] B --> C["Cosmic Osmo<br/>(Denser interactivity)"] end

subgraph Maturity["Myst Evolution"] C --> D["Seven-Page Proposal"] D --> E["Myst<br/>(Embedded storytelling & 3D renders)"] end ```

[03:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=186s) Pushing HyperCard to its Limits in *Cosmic Osmo*

Cyan followed up with *Cosmic Osmo*, which pushed the mechanics of their core development engine, Apple's HyperCard, to its limits. Rand retains immense affection for the software: “It was so, such an elegant, amazing tool that I don't think Apple understood even how to market that product.” Conceptually, HyperCard acted like an interactive stack of cards: - Authors could place transparent, invisible buttons on top of hand-drawn art. - Clicking an invisible hit-target transported the user to a completely different card (such as a detailed close-up of an object). - Branching card links formed the underlying architecture of Cyan's exploratory games.

HyperCard allowed Cyan to make every corner of *Cosmic Osmo* interactive. Rand remarks that he would still be developing in HyperCard today if it were still supported.

[04:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=269s) The Pitch: Japanese Backing, $250,000, and *The 7th Guest*

Impressed by *The Manhole*, a Japanese company reached out to Cyan asking if the brothers could develop and pitch an interactive game tailored for an older audience. Rand and Robyn immediately accepted: “Oh, hell yeah. We can do something for an older audience, you bet.” Lacking any formal experience in corporate game pitching, their proposal totaled roughly seven pages, made up of top-down island maps scribbled over with hand-written functional notes.

Cyan asked for a budget of approximately $250,000. During negotiations, the Japanese financiers asked if the project could rival or surpass *The 7th Guest*, an unreleased CD-ROM title that was generating heavy media buzz via technical preview reels. Rand and Robyn gave an enthusiastic guarantee: “Oh yeah, yeah, you bet.”

Building a game for mature players led them to incorporate cohesive narrative threads. In their previous whimsical software, items did not require underlying lore, but realistic exploration demanded logical narrative weight: - “Catherine, my love, I have to leave quickly. Something terrible has happened.” (In-game dramatic message excerpt). - “They kept the world somehow realistic because everything in the real world has a story to it. It's there for a reason.” - Traditional video game crutches were abandoned: players did not lose lives, gain levels, or restart on failure. - Delivering acceptable play value required vast environments built by sheer brute force, which ruled out floppy disks and made CD-ROM adoption mandatory.

[06:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=406s) 3D Rendering and Color Hardware Hacks

A pivotal milestone occurred when the team acquired early 3D rendering software. Rand and Robyn experimented by laying out a basic wireframe sphere and a table beneath a simulated light source. Hitting the "Render" button generated photorealistic shadows, reflections, and light bending through glass refraction. This breakthrough meant graphics no longer required hand drawing; they could be rendered directly into full-color scenes.

*Myst* was designed exclusively for color systems, without any black-and-white fallback mode. This presented an immediate hurdle because Robyn’s own machine was an early black-and-white Macintosh SE. To work in color, they had to modify the hardware: - The case back was detached to reveal the processor. - A third-party adapter board clipped directly onto the processor pins. - This hardware hack allowed the black-and-white Mac to output video signals to an external color monitor.

[07:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=478s) The CD-ROM Bottleneck: 150 KB/s, Seek Times, and "Working in Mud"

Targeting standard consumer setups posed immense technical risks. The baseline platform was the single-speed (1x) CD-ROM drive: - Streaming throughput peaked at a mere 150 KB per second. - Excessive drive head seek times posed an even larger barrier than raw transfer speed. - Double-speed drives were costly luxuries, and quad-speed hardware had not yet reached the consumer market. - Cyan committed to making the game run on entry-level multimedia machines rather than demanding high-end rigs.

Neither brother knew whether switching scenes would feel fluid or grind to an unplayable halt. Rand applied an interface rule he remembered from his previous career in banking: “Two seconds is how long you want people to wait before they get feedback from clicking something on the screen or from hitting a button on the screen.” Past two seconds, users begin questioning whether the system froze or if they made an error.

Testing was almost impossible during early development because standalone CD-ROM burners cost thousands of dollars. Cyan did not own a burner and had to rely on sporadic access through their publisher, Brøderbund, well after production was underway. The brother's workflow was brute-force: Robyn modeled and rendered full-color images on his Mac at home, passed the files over to Rand, and Rand scripted the navigation links inside HyperCard. Even with high-end Macs packed with maximum RAM and massive hard drives for the era, the system strain was severe: “And we were still working in mud. It was incredibly slow.”

[10:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=632s) The Distributed Mac Rendering Queue

Creating the visuals for *Myst* required relentless computer processing, especially on Robyn Miller's side as he modeled and rendered 3D scenes. Whenever Apple released a new computer model that Cyan could scrape together enough money to afford, they eagerly purchased it to bolster their hardware fleet. Robyn could not actively work on 3D modeling while a machine was tied up rendering, so he stacked his rendering jobs into a queue. Whenever a newer Mac was purchased, the older machine was shifted to the side to chew through that queue.

As their setup expanded, any downtime was immediately harnessed for rendering. If Robyn stepped away from his desk to grab a bite of dinner or a cup of coffee, the brothers immediately initiated renders on his primary workstation, combining it with the two secondary computers. By cobbling together whatever Macs were physically available into an ad hoc distributed rendering farm, they kept the queue running around the clock. As Rand Miller reflects on the grueling rendering bottleneck, “Everything had to be rendering all the time in order to try to get this work done.”

- **Hardware recycling:** Older Macintosh computers were repurposed exclusively as dedicated background rendering units whenever new hardware was purchased. - **Workflow optimization:** Scenes were batched and queued during active modeling sessions, then rendered simultaneously across all available desktop computers whenever desks were vacant.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Myst Distributed Rendering Workflow accDescr: Diagram illustrating how Robyn Miller's modeling queue was distributed across multiple Apple Mac computers during active work and breaks.

subgraph Workstation["Robyn's Workstation"] A["3D Scene Modeling"] --> B["Image Render Queue"] end

subgraph Farm["Distributed Render Queue"] C["Dedicated Mac #1"] D["Dedicated Mac #2"] E["Robyn's Main Mac (During Breaks)"] end

B --> C B --> D B -.->|"when away from desk"| E ```

[11:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=701s) CD-ROM Constraints: Disc Spiral Layout and Data Streaming

Navigating harsh technical limitations defined the entire development process. Rather than feeling discouraged by hardware barriers, Rand viewed them as puzzles to crack. As Rand Miller puts it, “Living within constraints is probably, it's like the name of the game for what we did.” He explains that developers must embrace this mindset: “I mean, if you're not a good problem solver, you just go do something else.” The core challenge boiled down to two mechanical realities: locating the necessary assets on the CD-ROM and transferring them off the optical disc as fast as possible. Consumer hardware at the time restricted the game to 8-bit color displays, allowing only 256 colors on screen simultaneously. Cyan used this 256-color palette limitation alongside an image compression algorithm to shrink each image down to roughly 50 kilobytes, enabling fast streaming.

Physical disc geometry dictated the asset structure. Because optical drive read-heads suffered massive latency penalties when seeking across tracks, files could not simply be dumped onto the disc alphabetically. Cyan meticulously mapped assets onto the spiral tracks based on geographic proximity within each Age, placing adjacent scenes near one another on the physical medium. Audio presented an even tighter bottleneck. Ambient music and environmental sounds streamed continuously in the background, but if the read-head had to jump across the disc to fetch the next pre-rendered background image, the audio buffer risked emptying, causing the sound to stutter or drop out completely. Interactive sound effects—such as a button clunking, a door squeaking, or a generator whining up to speed—also had to be positioned close to the visual assets on the physical spiral to fire instantly without stalling playback.

- **Image footprint:** Visual assets were capped at 8-bit color (256 colors) and compressed down to roughly 50 KB each to stream across single-speed (1x) CD-ROM drives. - **Spiral placement:** Assets were clustered physically by Age and spatial proximity rather than named alphabetically, minimizing mechanical seek times. - **Audio buffering:** Continuous background audio tracks and one-shot sound effects had to be interleaved near the scene images so the drive head could fill audio buffers without interrupting playback.

[15:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=921s) The Gold Master Test and Runaway Retail Success

After years of fine-tuning based on instinct and technical experience, Cyan copied their project onto a hard drive and shipped it south to Brøderbund to press the very first gold master CD-ROM of *Myst*. When the disc arrived back at the studio, the team popped it into their CD drives, clicked play with crossed fingers, and discovered that the game worked smoothly. In hindsight, Rand believes their sheer inexperience protected them from paralyzing anxiety. As Rand Miller observes, “Normal people should have been medicating themselves over, but we didn't have this really weird naivety that just kept us oblivious to the distractions of the fact that this might not work at all.” During development, the brothers had joked about reaching an unattainable sales target: “Robyn and I had discussions where we said, 'Man, if we sell 100,000 copies, can you imagine if we sold 100,000 copies of this game?'”

Following the game's release, Rand took a five-week vacation to New Mexico. While browsing a media retailer in Albuquerque to see if the game was even in stock, he found *Myst* dominating the back of the store, spread across the entire top shelf of the video game section. The title blew past their 100,000-copy milestone in a matter of months, locked down the number-one spot on sales charts, and remained on best-seller lists for years, moving multiple millions of units. Rand estimates that roughly half of all purchasers never even solved the puzzles required to escape Myst Island, yet the game's atmospheric magic and tantalizing story left an enduring mark on players and their families.

- **Sales milestone:** Cyan hoped the game might reach 100,000 copies total; it cleared that benchmark in mere months and went on to sell multi-millions. - **Completion rate:** Rand estimates that only about 50% of players ever managed to solve the initial puzzles and leave Myst Island.

[19:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=1141s) Designing Riven and the Shift Away from Indie Development

Cyan viewed *Myst* as an evolving experiment that laid the technical and narrative groundwork for its sequel, *Riven*. On *Myst*, budget constraints forced compromises, but the team noticed that the strongest moments occurred later in the game, where the narrative emerged naturally through the environment and inhabitants. For *Riven*, Cyan set out to abandon arbitrary puzzle design, such as unrelated chess games or standalone mini-games seen in titles like *The 7th Guest*. Instead, every puzzle had to be an organic extension of the world's culture and machinery. As Rand Miller explains, “And the puzzles needed to feel like they were part of the history of this place.”

This transition marked a turning point in the broader video game industry. Cyan had started out as an intimate two-brother indie team capable of producing world-class projects on their own. However, game development soon shifted toward massive budgets provided by large corporate publishers, making small-scale independent projects increasingly difficult to fund. While Cyan’s massive earnings from *Myst* secured their financial independence and allowed them to build *Riven* on their own terms, Rand watched with mixed emotions as the barrier to entry climbed across the medium.

- **Narrative integration:** *Riven* aimed to integrate puzzles directly into world history and character actions, rejecting standalone, arbitrary puzzles. - **Industry transformation:** The rise of multi-million-dollar production budgets pushed game creation away from bedroom indies and into the hands of corporate publishers.

[21:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=1294s) The Rebirth of Indie Development and Cyan's Full Circle

Rand Miller reflects on how the video game industry temporarily lost touch with the raw innovation pioneered by scrappy garage developers during the era when physical retail dominated the market. For years, launching a game required massive capital: companies had to physically press compact discs, manufacture packaging, manage warehouse stock, navigate complex logistics chains, and secure prime placement on brick-and-mortar store shelves. The advent of the internet and digital distribution fundamentally disrupted that barrier to entry. By removing the overhead of physical media and retail distribution, digital platforms allowed tiny two-person setups to flourish once again, echoing the way Rand and Robyn originally started out. As Rand fondly puts it: “And I love that. That's, to me, that whole indie rise again has kind of reinvigorated the industry, and I love what that's done.”

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Evolution of Game Distribution and Independence accDescr: Diagram contrasting traditional retail distribution friction with modern digital crowdfunding and direct distribution models.

subgraph RetailModel ["Traditional Retail Bottlenecks"] A["Garage Creators"] --> B["Publisher Financing"] B --> C["Pressing CDs & Stock"] C --> D["Retail Shelf Distribution"] end

subgraph ModernModel ["Digital & Crowdfunded Independence"] E["Small Indie Teams<br/>(1 Artist + 1 Programmer)"] --> F["Digital Downloads & Direct Delivery"] G["Community / Kickstarter"] --> H["Cyan Worlds: Obduction & Firmament"] end ```

For Cyan Worlds, this modern shift represents a complete full circle, freeing the studio from relying on traditional publishers to greenlight their creative visions. Instead of seeking corporate backing, Cyan turned directly to its audience through crowdfunding platforms to finance their titles *Obduction* and *Firmament*. Rand notes that returning to the Kickstarter well carries intense pressure because fans are pledging their own money on the promise of an original concept, yet it grants the team the creative autonomy to pursue brand-new ideas. Even at age 60, Rand finds himself engaged in the exact same forward-looking technical gamble that defined *Myst*: trying to forecast where technology and player expectations will sit two years down the road. Addressing that creative uncertainty, Rand concludes: “With the same struggle, fighting the same battles, and having to realize in my mind that I'm not, I may not get it right, but again, that's just how it is, and it's okay.”

- The elimination of physical manufacturing (pressing discs, storing inventory, shipping to retail shelves) enabled small teams consisting of just an artist and a programmer to emerge and thrive again. - Cyan leveraged crowdfunding on Kickstarter twice to bypass traditional publishers, first for *Obduction* and subsequently for *Firmament*. - Decades after the launch of *Myst*, the fundamental challenge remains unchanged: attempting to predict technical and creative landscapes years in advance while embracing the inherent risk of the unknown.

## Notable quotes > [07:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4&t=478s) Two seconds is how long you want people to wait before they get feedback from clicking something on the screen or from hitting a button on the screen. — Rand Miller

## Mentioned Rand Miller, Robyn Miller, Cyan Worlds, Myst, Riven, The Manhole, Cosmic Osmo, The 7th Guest, Obduction, Firmament, HyperCard, Apple, Macintosh SE, Brøderbund, University of New Mexico, Kickstarter

## Video description Cyan Worlds co-founder Rand Miller goes behind the scenes of the development of one of the best selling PC games of all time, Myst. The HyperCard-developed title ran into some snags when trying to run on the CD-ROM format. "I had a really powerful Mac, with a lot of memory and a lot of hard drive space, and we were still working in mud," said Rand, discussing the game's performance early-on. Rand and his brother, Robyn, compressed the image and audio data as much as they could so the game could run smoothly on 1x CD-ROM drives.

Connect with Ars Technica: Visit ArsTechnica.com: http://arstechnica.com Follow Ars Technica on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arstechnica Follow Ars Technica on Google+: https://plus.google.com/+ArsTechnica/videos Follow Ars Technica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/arstechnica

How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica

[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4)

中文简报

《神秘岛》当年差点无法在光盘上运行的内幕 | 战争故事 | Ars Technica 兰德·米勒回顾了Cyan工作室的演变历程：从《窨井》和《宇宙奥斯莫》等实验性HyperCard儿童软件，到向日本投资方推销雄心勃勃、剧情驱动的成人冒险游戏。开发《神秘岛》需要克服极其艰巨的技术难题，包括破解黑白Mac硬件以输出彩色画面、运行临时的分布式Mac渲染队列，以及在缓慢的单速（1x）CD-ROM驱动器物理螺旋轨道上，细致地交错排列50 KB的压缩图像与流式音频。出乎主创人员谨慎预期的意料，这款摒弃了传统武断谜题模式的游戏最终售出数百万份，成为一种文化现象。米勒将那个开创性时代与当下联系起来，指出数字分发和众筹让Cyan得以凭借《仰冲异界》和《天堑》回归其充满拼劲的独立开发初心。 Cyan在严苛的技术限制下基于HyperCard开发《神秘岛》，其目标配置是传输速率上限仅为150 KB/s且磁头寻道延迟极高的基础单速（1x）CD-ROM驱动器。 (7:58) 为防止音频缓冲中断和界面卡顿，资源被压缩至8位色（每张图像约50 KB），并根据地理空间邻近度而非字母顺序排列在光盘的物理螺旋轨道上。 (11:41) 尽管在25万美元的投资下出现了超支和延期，《神秘岛》仍在数月内彻底打破了Cyan最初乐观预期的10万套终身销量目标，售出数百万套并长期霸榜零售榜单。 (15:21) Cyan通过为《仰冲异界》和《天堑》发起Kickstarter众筹，绕过了传统发行商门槛和实体零售制造，完成了重回独立开发模式的闭环。 (21:34)

Source quotes

[7:58] Rand Miller: Two seconds is how long you want people to wait before they get feedback from clicking something on the screen or from hitting a button on the screen.

Original transcript

[0:00] [dramatic music] [0:07] - You'd think that [0:10] [laughs] normal people would feel [0:14] an immense amount of pressure over this. [0:17] We were way over budget, way over time. [0:19] I should not have been sleeping at night. [0:22] There was so much on the line. [0:23] Hi, I'm Rand Miller, the co-creator of "Myst." [0:26] We set out to make the real world of "Myst" [0:29] and ran smack into the real world limitations of CD-ROM. [0:32] [fire roaring and crackling] [0:41] I got into gaming when I was in junior high, [0:45] and I'm not young, so this was a long time ago. [0:48] The games I got into on computers [0:51] were not what people know today. [0:55] What really hooked me was a lunar lander game. [0:58] I remember it to this day. [1:00] There were no graphics to it. [1:02] This was a line of text on a CRT screen [1:05] that said how high I was off the lunar surface, [1:08] you know, just a number, [1:09] how fast I was going, and how much fuel I had left, [1:11] and then a question mark. [1:13] You put in how much fuel you want to burn, [1:14] you hit return, [1:16] and rinse, repeat, till you basically crash on the surface. [1:20] In junior high, a college friend took me [1:22] to the University of New Mexico computer center, [1:25] I saw that on the screen, and it was magic. [1:28] This was magic to me. [1:31] And he said, "There are other games, [1:33] "and you can make your own games. [1:36] "This, you write programs to do this." [1:38] It changed everything I wanted to do from that point on. [1:42] Cyan was probably formed in mid-'80s, [1:45] that we used that very, [1:49] what we thought at the time would be a very open-ended name, [1:52] so we could get into anything we wanted. [1:53] My brother Robyn and I had this idea of a blue sky, [1:57] and we liked that, so we picked that as a name. [1:59] I wrote to my brother and said, [2:01] "We should do this interactive book. [2:02] "We should do a book that's amazing." [2:04] He was an artist, a musician, [2:05] knew enough about computers to be dangerous, [2:08] and I knew enough about art and music to be dangerous, [2:09] and it was a great team. [2:12] We started with "The Manhole." [2:14] He drew the first page of a book, [2:16] which was a manhole cover [2:18] and a fire hydrant in the background. [2:20] And what happened was, [2:21] was this really interesting transition for us, [2:24] and it was what shaped us into what we were. [2:27] He didn't turn the page. [2:28] We didn't, after drawing the manhole cover [2:30] and the fire hydrant, [2:31] we didn't care about what was on the next page. [2:33] We cared about, "Well, what's under the manhole cover, [2:36] "and what's, you know, what is that fire hydrant about?" [2:39] And so, the pictures that I got from him were, [2:42] the manhole cover slid aside, [2:44] and a vine growing up to somewhere, [2:46] and a picture closer to the fire hydrant [2:49] with a little door, a tiny little door in the bottom. [2:52] And these were just still images that he sent me [2:55] that we linked together, and we suddenly realized [2:57] that we weren't doing an interactive book, [3:00] we were making a world. [3:01] I think it was one of the first entertainment CD-ROMs, [3:04] if not the first entertainment CD-ROM. [3:06] So "Cosmic Osmo" was how we evolved. [3:10] It was a very natural transition. [3:12] We had learned so much about our platform, HyperCard, [3:15] in the meantime, doing "Manhole," [3:16] and about what this world did well, "Manhole," [3:19] and what it didn't do well. [3:22] "Cosmic Osmo" was a chance for us [3:23] to push things a little further, [3:25] and it still is very close [3:28] to both my brother's and my heart. [3:30] It was a tour de force of what I think [3:34] at that point HyperCard could do [3:36] and what computers could do. [3:37] Everything was interactive. [3:38] And to this day, [3:40] I would be doing projects in HyperCard if it was available. [3:44] It was so, such an elegant, amazing tool [3:48] that I don't think Apple understood [3:51] even how to market that product. [3:53] At its core, HyperCard was, [3:57] just picture a stack of cards, [3:59] stack of, a virtual stack of cards [4:02] that you could put a button on any card, [4:06] an invisible button on any card. [4:08] If somebody clicked on that button, [4:09] it would go to another card. [4:11] And you could draw a picture on a card, [4:12] draw a picture of, say, a fire hydrant, [4:17] and put an invisible button on it, [4:19] and when you click on it, [4:21] you go to a picture of a close-up of that fire hydrant. [4:24] That then evolved into what we do. [4:27] A link of still pictures. [4:29] There was a Japanese company [4:31] who got in touch with us. [4:32] They had loved "The Manhole," [4:34] and they want to do something for an older audience. [4:37] They wanted to fund something for an older audience. [4:39] And we had this meeting with them where they said, [4:41] "You know, can you do something for an older audience?" [4:44] And we were like, "Oh, hell yeah. [4:46] "We can do something for an older audience, you bet." [4:49] With a proposal that was like seven pages, [4:51] and the proposal for "Myst," the seven pages, [4:54] if it was seven, I don't remember, [4:56] it was basically top-down maps of every island [4:58] with little notes on it, that was it. [4:59] We didn't know how you did a game proposal. [5:02] We would just, kinda did our thing up till then. [5:04] They said, "Okay, we'll give you," [5:07] I think we asked for $250,000 at the time, [5:11] and they said, "Now, this is gonna be good, [5:13] "like '7th Guest.' [5:14] "Will this be better than '7th Guest'?" [5:15] And if you don't know "7th Guest," [5:17] you should look it up. [5:18] It was one of the products that had, [5:20] it wasn't done at the time, [5:21] but it was being touted. [5:22] They were showing some previews for it [5:24] as this media project on CD-ROM, [5:26] and we went, "Oh yeah, yeah, you bet." [5:28] And from there, we just jumped in and started building it. [5:32] "Myst" was a very natural evolution [5:37] from our earlier worlds, as I've mentioned, [5:39] but it was also a leap. [5:41] Because what we'd learned doing our earlier worlds [5:45] is that you could embed pieces of story in your game. [5:48] We didn't know that at all in "The Manhole." [5:52] - Catherine, my love, I have to leave quickly. [5:55] Something terrible has happened. [5:57] - But we realized we liked it as we moved forward, [5:59] and those pieces of story [6:01] felt like they kept you honest. [6:03] They kept the world somehow realistic [6:06] because everything in the real world has a story to it. [6:08] It's there for a reason. [6:09] We realized when we were ready [6:11] to do something for an older audience [6:13] that that was important. [6:15] That we needed to have stories to things. [6:18] And there was no way to do this on floppy disk. [6:21] It wouldn't fit. [6:22] And part of the very appeal of this was that [6:24] we had made a game that you don't die, [6:27] you don't level, you don't start over, [6:29] and so the only way we were gonna give people [6:32] the amount of time for their money for the game [6:35] was just sheer brute force amount of real estate [6:39] that had to be available for them to explore, [6:41] and CD-ROM was our answer to that question, if it worked. [6:46] Very early, then, we got our hands [6:49] on some 3D rendering software. [6:52] Another one of those pivotal moments in, [6:53] where you realized the future's different from now on, [6:57] because I remember, [6:58] and I'm sure Robyn has the same recollection [7:01] of sitting down with that software, [7:03] putting a ball on the screen, [7:04] putting a table, putting a light source, [7:05] it's all in wire frame, very simple, [7:07] and clicking the Render button, [7:09] and out comes something [7:10] that generates shadows and reflections, [7:12] and the refraction through glass, [7:15] and, "Oh, this is different now. [7:18] "We can do this. [7:19] "We can render the images for 'Myst.' [7:21] "We don't have to hand-draw these." [7:23] We realized that this would be in color. [7:25] This would be the first product we would do [7:27] that would only play on color machines. [7:29] There would be no black-and-white option. [7:31] [laughing] Robyn's machine was a black-and-white Macintosh, [7:35] but it had been hacked with a clip. [7:37] It didn't have any expansion slots. [7:39] You'd take off the back and you get this crazy board [7:42] that was a clip that would clip onto the processor, [7:45] all the pins of the processor, [7:46] and give you a monitor that was color. [7:49] That's how we started "Myst," [7:51] with an early Mac SE, I think. [7:53] It was hacked to do color. [7:55] [dramatic music] [7:58] The problems we faced were really interesting, [8:03] and the largest of those was [8:07] this crazy idea of CD-ROM. [8:11] It was relatively new, [8:13] and what that meant is [8:14] that most people had just basically something like, [8:18] called a single-speed CD-ROM. [8:20] It was streaming at 150K per second, which is nothing. [8:25] 150K per second is all you could get [8:29] off that single-speed disc, [8:30] and we had to make the game work for that. [8:33] The streaming wasn't even the main problem. [8:35] The seek time was the biggest. [8:37] People with lots of money had double-speed drives, [8:40] or I think, I don't even think quad-speed drives [8:42] had been invented yet. [8:43] But it doesn't matter [8:44] because we have to sell to the most basic people. [8:47] And it's not even a sell thing. [8:49] We wanted people to experience this [8:50] who had the basic multimedia computer. [8:54] Not knowing for sure [8:55] if this was even gonna work, [8:57] if it was gonna be playable. [8:59] How long would it take on Myst Island, [9:02] when you were on the dock and you clicked [9:04] to move from one picture to the other? [9:06] And side note, I worked at a bank [9:09] for years before doing this, [9:11] and we had this psychological kind of play [9:13] that I probably heard at some IBM conference [9:17] that said, "Two seconds is how long you want people to wait [9:20] "before they get feedback [9:21] "from clicking something on the screen [9:23] "or from hitting a button on the screen," [9:25] and after two seconds, [9:26] they start to recognize that they're not getting something. [9:28] They start to wonder if it's them or if it's the machine, [9:31] and so you kind of want to keep it to that. [9:32] Well, we had no idea if we were gonna move, [9:34] how long was it gonna take? [9:36] It might have taken 10 seconds [9:37] to move to the next image. [9:39] We just didn't know. [9:40] CD-ROM burners were not readily available. [9:44] They were thousands of dollars for a CD-ROM burner. [9:46] We didn't have one. [9:48] It was our publisher, Broderbund, that may have had one, [9:50] and we didn't even use it [9:52] until we were well into the project. [9:54] Those were interesting times with no testing whatsoever. [9:58] Robyn was generating images. [10:00] I mean, this was how we had always worked, [10:03] it was just on steroids at this point. [10:05] He was at his house generating images, feeding them to me, [10:09] and I was linking those together in HyperCard. [10:12] And these are all full-color images that Robyn's sending. [10:14] So he had a really powerful Mac with a lot of memory [10:18] and a lot of hard drive space. [10:20] I had a really powerful Mac with a lot of memory [10:22] and a lot of hard drive space. [10:24] And we were still working in mud. [10:31] It was incredibly slow, [10:32] especially for Robyn, rendering those images. [10:35] It was wonderful times [10:36] when Apple would come out with a new machine, [10:37] and we thought we might be able to afford it [10:39] because we could add that to our collection. [10:43] What would happen is, [10:47] Robyn would stack up [10:49] [laughs] a lot of images to be rendered. [10:54] In other words, he couldn't be rendering as he's working. [10:56] He had to stack those up in a queue, [11:00] and at some point, we added another computer. [11:02] If he got a new computer, the old one would go to the side [11:04] and be used as part of this rendering queue, [11:06] and maybe another one would be added to the rendering queue, [11:09] and then as soon as he stopped working [11:11] or would go grab a bite at dinner or a cup of coffee, [11:15] you would immediately turn on rendering on his machine [11:19] to add it to the other two that were rendering. [11:20] And you could have this distributed rendering [11:23] with whatever machines were available [11:24] to try and keep generating those images [11:28] from what he had queued up. [11:30] Everything had to be rendering all the time [11:32] in order to try to get this work done. [11:36] - I hope I pushed the right button, my dear brother. [11:41] - Living within constraints is probably, [11:44] it's like the name of the game for what we did. [11:46] And I don't think we looked at it that way at the time. [11:48] There were tons of constraints, [11:50] and those were just problems to be solved. [11:52] I love problem solving, [11:54] and I think that's part of what you have to do [11:56] if you're gonna do games. [11:57] I mean, if you're not a good problem solver, [11:59] you just go do something else. [12:04] So the two problems, you gotta find it on the CD-ROM, [12:06] and you've gotta get it off of the CD-ROM [12:08] as quickly as possible. [12:09] So starting with the images, I mean that's number one, [12:12] they were 8-bit images because [12:16] most people's computers couldn't do more than eight bits. [12:19] What that means is that [12:21] we could show 256 colors on the screen at a time. [12:25] So just the images alone [12:26] had to be laid out on the spirals in close proximity. [12:30] We didn't want it seeking to some faraway spot. [12:32] So it's not like you just lay 'em [12:34] and put 'em in the disc in alphabetical order, [12:35] every image in the game. [12:36] So we organized those by ages in close proximity. [12:39] We put our names of these things, [12:41] so that the close-by images [12:44] would be relatively close on the spiral. [12:46] We used two levels of compression for the images. [12:52] One was, we used only 256 colors to do the images, [12:57] which made them smaller, [12:59] but we also used a compression technique as well [13:01] to make them small so they would stream faster. [13:03] We got 'em down to 50K, maybe, each. [13:06] So that takes care of the image problem. [13:08] Now we have a music problem, [13:10] and let's just call it a sound problem. [13:13] We have music or sound effects [13:15] that are playing in the background, [13:16] and they're streaming all the time. [13:18] So if, for example, I walk down into this generator tunnel [13:22] and I need this weird, eerie sound to play, [13:25] [machinery clanging] [13:30] we could do the music in several different ways, [13:33] but the easiest would be [13:35] to just put the tracks of music somewhere on the CD-ROM [13:38] and let it go to those music tracks [13:41] and just stream it on its own. [13:42] Let the OS and the operating system kind of handle, [13:46] or QuickTime, handle streaming those things. [13:48] But can it get to those, and seek back to the next picture, [13:52] and get to those, and seek to the next picture [13:54] without chopping the sound off? [13:56] 'Cause there's a very real possibility [13:58] that I load that sound, [14:00] I go to seek the next picture, [14:02] and depending on the chunk size of sound, [14:06] I can't get back to the sound fast enough [14:09] for it to load it into a buffer [14:12] and play it without all of a sudden cutting off the music, [14:15] having a blank space of sound, [14:17] and then finally finding the music, [14:18] getting back to that, and streaming it again. [14:20] So we're trying to put the music pieces close enough [14:23] where it doesn't have to go too far to get to 'em. [14:25] On top of that, if I push a button, [14:28] I've got to have a ka-chunk sound, [14:30] [door slamming] [14:31] and if I open a door, I want a squeaking sound, [14:34] [door squeaking] [14:35] and if I turn on a generator, [14:36] I want a ramp-up sound [generator whistling] [14:38] or a slow-down sound, [14:39] or all those little one-shot sound effects as well [14:43] that I need to happen quickly, [14:47] and they need to be close on that CD-ROM. [14:49] And these are all things we had done meticulously [14:53] to try and get our data rate very low, [14:56] but we would have had to just shrink it more, [14:58] so we, there was, you know, [15:01] I guess experience is one of those weird kind of things [15:03] where you can't put your finger [15:06] on exactly the calculation that, [15:08] where you think it's gonna work, [15:10] but because we'd been doing it for five years or six years, [15:14] we just kinda had this feeling, and luckily, we were, [15:18] we were kind of right. [15:21] It's this weird process where we sent hard drives, [15:24] probably a hard drive down to Broderbund, [15:28] and they burned the first CD of "Myst," [15:32] so we got the gold master, we put it in our CD drives, [15:35] we click Play, and we all cross our fingers [15:39] and give it a try. [15:41] And it comes up, [15:43] and for the most part, it's working. [15:47] Normal people should have been medicating themselves over, [15:51] but we didn't have this really weird naivety [15:53] that just kept us oblivious [15:59] to the distractions of the fact [16:02] that this might not work at all. [16:05] And what a weird thing to think [16:07] that that's what, in some ways, saved us. [16:10] I mean, I don't know that we even [16:11] would have taken on the project [16:12] if we didn't have that. [16:14] Robyn and I had discussions where we said, [16:15] "Man, if we sell 100,000 copies, [16:17] "can you imagine if we sold 100,000 copies of this game?" [16:21] Oh, I mean that was mind blowing, 100,000 copies. [16:25] So there was no way in the world [16:27] that we could have anticipated the success. [16:30] No way in the world. [16:35] Look, I remember going into my first, [16:39] you know, media store back in the day. [16:42] After "Myst," I took a long vacation. [16:44] I went to New Mexico and took a five-week vacation, [16:47] and I remember in New Mexico, we'd just shipped. [16:50] I went into a store in Albuquerque that's a media store, [16:53] and I'm like, "I wonder if the game's here, [16:54] "I wonder if the game's here." [16:56] And I walked to the back, and it was like covering [16:59] the whole top shelf of the gaming section. [17:06] And I was in awe. [17:08] I was, my mind was blown. [17:10] Like, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy. [17:14] "This can't be happening, this is so cool." [17:17] I think our discussion between Robyn and I was, [17:22] "You know, 100,000 copies would be amazing. [17:25] "Just amazing, amazing, amazing." [17:27] And we hit that mark fairly quickly. [17:31] I mean, within months. [17:33] And then it just kept selling. [17:34] It kept selling. [17:36] It was on the top 10 chart. [17:39] It was number one for a long time, [17:41] but then it was on the charts for years. [17:43] And so we very quickly got to millions of copies. [17:47] Multiple millions of copies. [17:49] One of the ironies of the game is that, [17:52] I mean, we have to guess at this, [17:53] but I think that probably only 50% [17:55] of the people who played it [17:56] even made it off the Island of Myst [17:58] because of the puzzles involved. [18:00] But for some reason, that didn't dampen enthusiasm. [18:04] I think because that first island was so intriguing [18:08] and you got enough of the story to kind of be tantalized, [18:11] and because maybe some of the audience was young at the time [18:15] and it just felt magical, that was, [18:17] it left a great taste in people's psyche [18:21] about what the game was, [18:22] which is really nice, even to this day. [18:25] I mean, I get people who are [18:26] way too young to have played "Myst" [18:28] who come up to me now and say, [18:31] "Yeah, I remember as a kid, [18:33] "my mom or dad playing 'Myst,' [18:36] "and I was watching those places on the screen, [18:40] "and I didn't really understand it, [18:41] "but it just felt so interesting to see that." [18:43] And that is really satisfying, [18:47] to still have that kind of resonance to this day. [18:50] I can't tell you how, you know, as a creator of that, [18:54] how satisfying and wonderful that is. [19:01] So here's the lessons we learned from "Myst" [19:03] that we tried to evolve this thing for. [19:05] We still feel like "Myst" was an experiment. [19:07] As much as every one of the previous kids' games [19:11] that we did kind of evolved, [19:14] in many ways, it led to "Riven." [19:16] We realized that the things we liked in "Myst" [19:20] were the things that came a little later, [19:22] where the story came out a little more, [19:26] where the story was revealed in the environment [19:29] or the people that were there, [19:31] but a little more integrated well. [19:33] And "Myst" budget didn't allow it, [19:37] "Riven" would allow it, [19:38] so we could put more people, [19:39] we could have that story kind of revealed, [19:42] but more than that, the puzzles themselves [19:47] and the friction itself [19:49] needed to not just feel like it was, [19:53] I don't know, arbitrary. [19:56] And as much as people said that "Myst," [19:57] you know, I think for its time, [19:59] even Myst Island felt like, [20:00] "Oh, these puzzles make sense," and they weren't, [20:03] "The 7th Guest" kind of would just throw some puzzles in. [20:05] Not to diminish it, it was amazing, [20:07] but it was, at that time, [20:10] they just kind of threw some puzzles in [20:11] to play chess or whatever. [20:13] We were trying to integrate 'em, [20:15] and so it felt good, [20:16] but we realized that that wasn't enough. [20:17] That was not enough. [20:18] And the puzzles needed to feel [20:20] like they were part of the history of this place. [20:22] And so "Riven" was really a challenge to make that happen, [20:24] and during the design, that was on our minds. [20:27] Like, "How are we gonna build the history, [20:28] "the storytelling, into this world? [20:30] "How are we gonna build the puzzles into this world? [20:32] "And how are we gonna really integrate that?" [20:35] And it was one of the greatest challenges, [20:38] and it was, all the lessons we have learned [20:41] kind of led to "Riven," [20:42] to try and do that as, to the best of our abilities. [20:46] - Atrus! [20:49] [wind howling] [20:51] - Here's the interesting thing about the industry, too. [20:53] Everything has shifted in the industry. [20:56] In a lot of ways, I'm really happy [20:57] in the ways it's shifted. [20:59] I mean, I started with my brother [21:01] in this, in making games. [21:03] It was just the two of us [21:04] doing this little indie kind of thing [21:07] that we felt we could do by ourselves, [21:09] and then we've watched the trend in gaming [21:12] go to a place where the only people who could make games [21:16] were enabled by large amounts of money [21:19] from large corporations who were publishers, [21:22] and that was in some ways sad because, [21:26] I mean, luckily, we were on the right side of that. [21:27] We were, we had our funding from "Myst" [21:30] and we could keep going. [21:32] But it felt like the whole industry [21:34] lost some kind of innovation [21:36] by the guys in the garage. [21:37] By that indie feeling. [21:39] And with the advent of the internet, [21:42] and in particular, the advent of downloadable content, [21:45] where the need to press CDs and have stock, [21:50] and manage that stock and distribute it to stores, [21:55] and have things on the shelf, [21:57] that suddenly brought in a whole new influx [21:59] of young, two-person shops again, [22:03] where, "Hey, I got a person who can do art, [22:05] "I got a person who can program. [22:06] "We should make a game." [22:07] And I love that. [22:08] That's, to me, that whole indie rise again [22:12] has kind of reinvigorated the industry, [22:14] and I love what that's done. [22:16] And in some ways, it's kind of come full circle for us. [22:20] I mean, we don't now depend on a publisher anymore. [22:24] We've, the last two project we've done, [22:27] or the last, we did "Obduction," which was a Kickstarter, [22:31] and then our current project, "Firmament," [22:33] is the same thing. [22:34] Twice, we've gone back to the well, [22:36] the Kickstarter well, and our fan base has said, [22:40] "Yeah, we're willing to risk it for a new game from you." [22:43] From a new title. [22:44] And there's a lot of pressure with that, but it's also this, [22:47] "Here I am, getting to do a whole new idea for a game." [22:52] So it's, the struggle kind of continues, [22:55] and here I am, 60 years old, [22:56] trying to anticipate with "Firmament" [22:58] where things are gonna be two years from now. [23:00] With the same struggle, [23:02] fighting the same battles, [23:04] and having to realize in my mind [23:06] that I'm not, I may not get it right, [23:08] but again, that's just how it is, and it's okay. [23:17] [gentle music]